Steam Support email blacklisted by Earthlink

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phadin Jun 5, 2018 @ 4:34pm

I saw this happen a couple of years ago but it was cleared up. Now it's back. One or more IPs that Steam support sends their emails from has been blacklisted by Earthlink. It doesn't even land in my mailbox for any other filters to get. Someone from Steam's operations team needs to contact Earthlink and get their IPs whitelisted. as a User, I can NOT do this as i do not have the information on what IPs you send your emails from.

This is preventing emails such as verification and purchase acknowledgements from getting to my earthlink email account.

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Showing 1-15 of 19 comments

shiel Jun 5, 2018 @ 4:35pm

Why would Valve care? Get a gmail account. It's free and it doesn't have issues with Steam.

999999999 Jun 5, 2018 @ 4:47pm

Earthlink? 1990's still?

Gmail

76561198407601200 Jun 5, 2018 @ 6:15pm

Originally posted by phadin:
I saw this happen a couple of years ago but it was cleared up. Now it's back. One or more IPs that Steam support sends their emails from has been blacklisted by Earthlink. It doesn't even land in my mailbox for any other filters to get. Someone from Steam's operations team needs to contact Earthlink and get their IPs whitelisted. as a User, I can NOT do this as i do not have the information on what IPs you send your emails from.

This is preventing emails such as verification and purchase acknowledgements from getting to my earthlink email account.

So, your isp (not valve) blacklisted valve, and you valve to do something about it?

 KARR™ Jun 6, 2018 @ 4:20am

Originally posted by The Living Tribunal:
So, your isp (not valve) blacklisted valve, and you valve to do something about it?

Pretty standard for a company that is blocked to be the one to request an unblock and take measures on specific IP/Mailservers that may not be configured properly or to amend them to reduce spam detection ratings.

phadin Jun 6, 2018 @ 3:41pm

Originally posted by  KARR™:
Originally posted by The Living Tribunal:
So, your isp (not valve) blacklisted valve, and you valve to do something about it?

Pretty standard for a company that is blocked to be the one to request an unblock and take measures on specific IP/Mailservers that may not be configured properly or to amend them to reduce spam detection ratings.

Pretty much this. As users, we don't have the necessary information, nor do we have the authority to make an unblock request for a third party like Valve. We don't own their servers or IPs, so why would Earthlink or any other ISP take our word as users to unblock something? They need the owner of the IP or blocked address to make the request to be removed from the blacklist.

Keep in mind these blacklists affect more then just me, but all Earthlink users... or users of whatever ISP is doing the blacklisting. Removing a blacklisted IP exposes all their users to potential traffic from that IP. If they unblocked an IP based on the word of a user, not the IP's owner, they could be opening a whole lot of other users to potentially bad traffic.

Vaulty Jun 6, 2018 @ 3:53pm

Contact Earthlink showing that it's Steam IPs and they are safe

76561198407601200 Jun 6, 2018 @ 4:14pm

Originally posted by  KARR™:
Originally posted by The Living Tribunal:
So, your isp (not valve) blacklisted valve, and you valve to do something about it?

Pretty standard for a company that is blocked to be the one to request an unblock and take measures on specific IP/Mailservers that may not be configured properly or to amend them to reduce spam detection ratings.

But Valve has no involvement in this. They're not the ones asking earthlink to get off the blacklist. Again, it's something that you, not valve, want earthlink to do. I suggest you contact them.

kenixtus Jun 6, 2018 @ 9:28pm

We really need steam to review this URL and take the action documented in it.
https://support.earthlink.net/articles/email/email-blocked-by-earthlink.php

76561198407601200 Jun 7, 2018 @ 9:57am

Originally posted by kenixtus:
We really need steam to review this URL and take the action documented in it.
{LINK REMOVED}

Again this is something YOU are wanting, not Valve, thus Valve does not need to take any action. An example that would be more suited for you, i were not invited to a party that i had no concern about, yet there were friends/associates of mine that wanted me there, it wouldn't be MY responsibility to get invited seeing as i never wanted to in the first place. That would fall on the responsibility of the ones who want me there to talk to the host. Again, this requires no involvement from Valve, this is something earthlink needs to take care of.

Silicon Vampire Jun 7, 2018 @ 1:46pm

I would think the best course of action would be to contact EarthLink and ask them what it actually takes to get this done... or get a gmail address which is probably going to be much easier in the end.

#10

phadin Jun 7, 2018 @ 2:52pm

Originally posted by The Living Tribunal:
Originally posted by kenixtus:
We really need steam to review this URL and take the action documented in it.
https://support.earthlink.net/articles/email/email-blocked-by-earthlink.php
Again this is something YOU are wanting, not Valve, thus Valve does not need to take any action. An example that would be more suited for you, i were not invited to a party that i had no concern about, yet there were friends/associates of mine that wanted me there, it wouldn't be MY responsibility to get invited seeing as i never wanted to in the first place. That would fall on the responsibility of the ones who want me there to talk to the host. Again, this requires no involvement from Valve, this is something earthlink needs to take care of.

Valve does have a vested interest in having their email unblocked. It is critical to the communication with their customers. To say Valve doesn't care about their email being blocked is to say Valve doesn't care if their users (us) actually get the support emails from them. That would be a rather horrible stance to take regarding customer service for Valve.

As for me trying to do it, that link that was posted has a nice note at the bottem basically saying I can't. They won't make exceptions just because I want to recieve Valve's email. They require the senders to make requests to unblock an IP.

"Please understand that we cannot make exceptions for individual senders or EarthLink accounts in that situation, but we will accept requests to remove the block. These requests must contain the bounce message received by the sender, so unblock requests are best submitted by the owner of the server, or the sender of the original email message. "

#11

Silicon Vampire Jun 7, 2018 @ 2:58pm

Have you asked EarthLink WHY it is blacklisted? Have you inquired at all? It might be a error at their end.

Last edited by Silicon Vampire; Jun 7, 2018 @ 2:58pm

#12

phadin Jun 7, 2018 @ 3:14pm

I've been through that circus once before. There are a few issues I run into, The first one being I don't know what IP Address has been blacklisted. I don't know what IPs Valve sends their email from. They don't blacklist domains or email addresses, they blacklist by IP Address. I can't ask why they blacklist 'noreply@steampowered.com' as thats not how they blacklist.

Even if I could get a response on that topic and identify a mistake, they won't remove the IP block at my request. Per the previous document that was referenced. They can't simply take my word that it is Steam's IP and remove the block. They require the owner of the IP Address (Valve) to make the request. Again, been through that particular request before a few years ago. I couldn't resolve it on my own then either.

My guess is there are legal/liabilty issues around that. Removing a blocked IP address at the request of someone who is not the owner of the IP would make them liable if that IP was then used to send spam or malicious email to their users.

#13